Editing Modern architecture (section)

===American Art Deco; the skyscraper style (1919–1939)===
{{main|Art Deco|Streamline Moderne}}
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File:American Radiator Building.jpg|The [[American Radiator Building]] in New York City by [[Raymond Hood]] (1924)
File:Guardian Building Detroit Interior Clock.jpg|[[Guardian Building]] in Detroit, by [[Wirt C. Rowland]] (1927–29)
File:Chrysler Building spire, Manhattan, by Carol Highsmith (LOC highsm.04444).jpg|[[Chrysler Building]] in New York City, by [[William Van Alen]] (1928–30)
File:GeneralElectricBuilding-Crown.jpg|Crown of the [[General Electric Building]] (also known as 570 Lexington Avenue) by [[Cross & Cross]] (1933)
File:GE Building by David Shankbone.JPG|30 Rockefeller Center, now the [[Comcast Building]], by [[Raymond Hood]] (1933)
</gallery>
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, an exuberant American variant of Art Deco appeared in the [[Chrysler Building]], [[Empire State Building]] and [[Rockefeller Center]] in New York City, and [[Guardian Building]] in Detroit. The first skyscrapers in Chicago and New York had been designed in a neo-gothic or neoclassical style, but these buildings were very different; they combined modern materials and technology (stainless steel, concrete, aluminum, chrome-plated steel) with Art Deco geometry; stylized zig-zags, lightning flashes, fountains, sunrises, and, at the top of the Chrysler building, Art Deco "gargoyles" in the form of stainless steel radiator ornaments. The interiors of these new buildings, sometimes termed Cathedrals of Commerce", were lavishly decorated in bright contrasting colors, with geometric patterns variously influenced by Egyptian and Mayan pyramids, African textile patterns, and European cathedrals, [[Frank Lloyd Wright]] himself experimented with [[Mayan Revival architecture|Mayan Revival]], in the concrete cube-based [[Ennis House]] of 1924 in Los Angeles. The style appeared in the late 1920s and 1930s in all major American cities. The style was used most often in office buildings, but it also appeared in the enormous movie palaces that were built in large cities when sound films were introduced.{{Sfn|Duncan|1988|p=}}